Some of the many articles about it:

The notion that wolves fight amongst each other and the strongest becomes the “alpha” and the weakest is the “omega” and all that, is a misconception that has been debunked ages ago, and even the author of the study who called them “alphas” in the first place is pleading with his old publisher to stop printing the dang book already so this misconception can finally die out.

Wolf packs are more or less just families. One “breeding pair” and their pups, which often stay with their parents way into adulthood.

  • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Considering the original study only documented Wolves in captivity I explain it like this: Alpha, Beta, Sigma, whatever, is just the type of prison bitch you’d be, so congrats.

    • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Exactly this. Put any one species into a tiny depressing enclosure with way too many strangers and way too little food, and they will fight and establish a pecking order eventually. This has nothing to do with how the same species would behave in the wild and with enough resources to live comfortably, and the author realized that mistake years ago and is since trying to correct it.

      But I guess the entire “alpha male” thing is just too popular with certain people … ahem.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Just like the vaccines cause autism study, this won’t ever die out. People only ever remember the original.

    • sebinspace@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      People only ever remember the original.

      And only partially so. Conveniently, they forget the part where, IIRC, guy was just trying to promote his own vaccine

        • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          His name was on the patent. There was a second name on it as well, and that guy was someone whom the first cited. This second guy lost his license two years before publishing his paper, that the infamous one cited.

          • __dev@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Deer had “produced documentary evidence that Wakefield applied for a patent on a single-jab measles vaccine before his campaign against the MMR vaccine, raising questions about his motives”.

            He both wanted to sell test kits and have his own vaccine.

          • PM_ME_FEET_PICS@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            You’re the most wrong lol.

            He put out the study stating a link between the MMR vaccine and bowel disorders. Further stated that autism was caused by bowel disorders.

            He advocated people to take the seperate vaccines not not the single MMR vaccine. At the time of the study he was developing his own vaccine and had a stake in another, meaning his study had a strong monetary motive.

            He would become and anti-vax hero even though he wanted people to take more vaccines, not none.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I tried explaining this to a “dog person” and they wanted no part of it. It was like telling a child Santa Claus wasn’t real or something

  • Meldroc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    These days, the only people still using this debunked wolf talk are douchebros, chuds, & incels.

  • okamiueru@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Indeed. There are many still who are making big bucks on this misconception. The worst offender in my opinion is “The dog whisperer”, who is likely the worst well known dog trainer, and has done (and still does) a lot of damage. The whole basis for his school of thought is based on this alpha/beta/omega hierarchy.

  • Classy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Alpha hyenas, however, those are definitely real. But they’re boss babes so the PUAs can’t work with that

    • nudermeisters@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      Women: Get some minute fraction of some sort of competitive advantage against men, in a single arena, when the OnlyFans "revolution" happened

      Men: I’m suddenly a “high value male” ! Who is probably broke af

      • a man
  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ironically its that they don’t have “alphas” in the wild because they just separate and leave each other alone…

    For humans in school, prisons, and even just work environments we’re a lot more like captive wolves than wild

    This terminology arose from research done on captive wolf packs in the mid-20th century—but captive packs are nothing like wild ones, Mech says. When keeping wolves in captivity, humans typically throw together adult animals with no shared kinship. In these cases, a dominance hierarchy arises, Mech adds, but it’s the animal equivalent of what might happen in a human prison, not the way wolves behave when they are left to their own devices.

    That being said, any person describing themselves as an alpha is usually a big piece of shit.

  • Scrof@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Wolves are also scavengers and would gladly eat rotten corpses, trash and literal shit (just like dogs).